Sunday, 7th of November, 2010

Oh what lovely musics for you tonight!
LISTEN AGAIN via the link at the bottom, of course!

We started with the beauty of Nosaj Thing, remixed by Dntel, who (since his first few releases) can be a bit hit-and-miss, but turns in a really classy mix here. I was a little suspicious of hearing these distinctive, melodic tunes remixed, but there are a bunch of top class tracks, a couple more of which I played later on.

AOKI Takamasa has made some great glitchy hip-hop in his time, as well as collaborating with Tujiko Noriko. His Raster-Noton release is totally appropriate for that label – minimal sound sources, impeccably programmed together into facsimile hip-hop. Very nice.
Also minimalist, on the same label, is Kangding Ray’s tribute to the Pruitt Igoe housing complex. Somehow. Very nice beats and sounds on the original, and our very own Ben Frost adds his signature low-end snarls for his remix.

While Danish trio System have made minimal dubby techno in the past, their new album explores all sorts of sounds, including a dubstep influence, and the track we heard tonight was fabulously full-bodied ambient.

Heading south to The Netherlands, we meet up with well-established UFog faves Funckarma, who have a new EP on a new label (as is their wont), with one track of excellent acid techno, and then one piece of nice heavy dubstep. In between, one of the brothers, Roel Funcken, gives us a bonus track from his new EP (and see below — you can download it for free), in which he goes in a very drum’n’bass direction.

And back to Nosaj Thing. Low Limit’s remix preserves a lot of the original, while equally taking in a great aqua-crunk direction… Meanwhile, Jon Hopkins puts his imprint all over his remix, and I strongly recommend watching the rather disturbing video — a very impressive realisation of a track which has a fantastic musical narrative to it.

While the following track has more of a link with Nosaj, I thought we ought to hear the latest self-released track from Various, a very nice Massive Attack-style dubstep cover of The xx. Yes.

But, Nosaj Thing has produced tracks for Busdriver, who also performs a bizarre mostly-a capella remix of Nosaj on his Comuter Cooties mixtape. Nosaj label-mate Free The Robots produced the fun track we heard tonight, and as you can see below, the “mixtape” is a free download from Busdriver’s site!
Lately, Busdriver seems to be leaning towards actually singing, and his Physical Forms band is, well, a band. With songs. One such song is on a new 7” on Polyvinyl Records, but I was more taken by his collaborative song with Deerhoof. Very nice.

Anticon originals Themselves turned out a new album last year, and we now have the remix album. I felt the album was a little lacklustre, but there are certainly at least a couple of very strong remixes here. You can rely on Alias for punchy beats and great production; and it’s nice that “Daxstrong” gets remixed by Dax Pierson and Themselves’ collaboration with The Notwist, 13&god.

That pretty, glitchy track leads nicely into fieldhead, who has a live album out for as little as $0 (see link below)! His sound translates most excellently to the live arena, ably aided by Sarah Kemp (brave timbers) and others.

But this week’s exciting find is Skjølbrot, who despite this name is actually Dan Bennett from the UK. With piano and other instruments combining with wonderfully abstract noises and possibly field recordings, this is a sublime debut (or sort-of debut) and well worth getting hold of (direct from the artist!)

We had one abrasive track from last week’s feature, Foetus, showing his industrial heritage, and then went on to a piece of bizarre funk from the wonderful Cerberus Shoal, whose “new” album (an unreleased album from a few years back) is winging its way from a little Japanese label as we speak. Hopefully something from that next week!

Aaron Martin appears twice tonight. First off, a solo track from the highly-recommended Lost Tribe Sound Volume One compilation — this is Aaron at his most ravishing, layered cello and electronic sounds. He has a new project with singer Dawn Smithson called Winter’s Day, and we heard a track also featuring layered cello under her beautiful folky voice.

I’m still getting a lot out of the long-awaited debut album from Sydney post-rockers Grün. The first track I played tonight starts with classic piano melodies and guitar textures, but ends up going all-out with waves of distortion — nice! And later, the almost-ten-minute epic that I played a couple of weeks back, lovely dubby delays; doesn’t drag on despite its length.

Speaking of dub, The Blood of Heroes is a bit of a supergroup that I somehow missed earlier in the year. On Enduser’s Ohm Resistance label, featuring ace breakcore/drum’n’bass programming from the man himself and Kurt Submerged melding perfectly with the heavy shoegazey guitars of Justin K Broadrick, the bass of Bill Laswell, and the Brooklyn dub vocals of Dr Israel, along with some live drummers and more electronics. It’s the sortof seeming hodge-podge that should be worthy but uninteresting (especially, it has to be said, with Laswell present), but instead it’s actually very good indeed. I’m a sucker for the Jesu guitar sound anyway, and love hearing it with heavy drum’n’bass and dub beats, and while Dr Israel’s vocals could be a bit gratuitous, they remind me (in context) somewhat of the more dubby aspects of Pop Will Eat Itself — in a good way.

I had the honour of playing on Saturday night at Gail Priest’s album launch, and she did a crackin’ great live set, with vocals and live electronics. We heard a very spooky track tonight from that new album.
And finally, Adelaide’s Inch-time, currently resident in London, dropped by last week and had a chat, which I’ll be putting to air next week along with a special on his music, which has been heard on this show since the very early days. His new remix album is very fine indeed, and Isan turn in a gorgeous sparkly ambient mix to close the show.

Labels and artists!

email: utilityfog at frogworth dot com
Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Whether cataloguing the jungle resurgence, tracking the ups and downs of noise and drone, or unearthing the remnants of glitch and folktronica, all is contextualised within artist & genre histories for a fulfilling sonic journey.
Since all these genre names are already pretty ridiculous, we thought we'd coin a new one. So "postfolkrocktronica" it is. Wear it.